WAWA/WeAreWideAwake is my Public Service to America as a muckracker who has journeyed seven times to Israel Palestine since June 2005.
WAWA is dedicated to confronting media and governments that shield the whole
truth.

We who Are Wide
Awake are compelled by the "fierce urgency of Now" [Rev MLK, Jr.] to raise
awareness and promote the human dialogue about many of the crucial issues of our
day: the state of our Union and in protection of democracy, what life is like
under military occupation in Palestine, the Christian EXODUS from the Holy Land,
and spirituality-from a Theologically Liberated Christian Anarchist
POV.

"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils."George Washington's Farewell Address - 1796

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. -July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence

Theism:
belief in the existence of a god or gods; specificallya belief in the existence of one God viewed as the
creative source of the human race and the world who transcends yet is immanent
in the world. -Merriam Webster

"Any
god who can be killed ought to be killed."- Clifford Stanley, Episcopal Priest and Professor of Theology

I "got the message this
morning, the one that was sent to me" [Bob Dylan] and although the topic
of the conversation with the Editor of Salem-News.com was not on this topic,
what Tim King wrote read like the voice of God speaking to me:

"Part
of what is taking place is a simple realization of the power of creation that
exists within."

What I had been cogitating
upon for weeks and what kept me wide-awake last night, were the messages I got
while reading Bishop John Shelly Spong.

Way ahead of the masses he
wrote in 1998,
Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A
Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile.

It took him twenty years to
write that book about his desire to worship the Mystery we call God as a citizen
of the modern world who thinks!

God gave us all a brain that
we should use it!

As there is so much heavy
baggage attached to the name God, I propose a new name: Pure Being.

And I imagine that Paul
Tillich would appreciate it.

Tillich was a refugee from
Nazi Germany, a Christian existentialist and American theologian. Tillich
philosophized that the existential questions of human existence centered on
ontology: the study of the nature of being, existence and reality in general.

Before Tillich died in 1965,
he proposed a 100-year moratorium on the use of the word God, because it had
become so corrupted.

The concept of Being,
"appears in the present system in three places: in the doctrine of God,
where God is called the being as being or the ground and the power of being; in
the doctrine of man, where the distinction is carried through between man's
essential and his existential being; and finally, in the doctrine of the
Christ, where he is called the manifestation of the New Being, the actualization
of which is the work of the divine Spirit." Tillich, Systematic Theology
Vol. 2, p.10

For this Christian
Anarchist-Buddhist with a dose of dervish, Jesus for me is my Brother and The
Prince of Peace.

His last words to the
community before his crucifixion-the Roman occupying forces standard method of
capital punishment-was "To put down the sword."

Among the last words the
Prince of Peace uttered on the cross were: "Father, forgive them; they
know not what they are doing."

And not much has changed in
2,000 years!

The Prince of Peace also said
that he came so that we would have life to the full; abundant life [John 10:10]
and that takes deep thought and then taking action.

Two thousand years ago, there
was lively debate about whom the Christ-the very first WIDE AWAKE man.

Until the Church got in bed
with Emperor Constantine, all the churches were hot beds of individuality and
not the institutions that have become big business today.

In 1994, Spong wrote, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? which faced the fact that viewing the resurrection of
The Prince of Peace as PHYSICAL was a late developing tradition in early
Christianity, which was called The Way until the days of Paul, in the third
decade.

Paul as well as the gospel
writers of Mark and Matthew made NO such claim that the burst of life, light
and energy that accompanied the birth of Christianity was dependent on this
orthodox theology or any dogma.

In 1996, Spong wrote, Liberating the Gospels, he contended that the writers of the synoptic
gospels-Luke, Matthew and Mark- were NOT eye witnesses to the life and death of
The Prince of Peace and these gospels/good news were not even based on eye
witness memories.

Instead, they were liturgical
works organized around the Jewish liturgical year and were NOT to be taken
literally, but probed within the Jewish context.

The Prince of Peace/Jesus was
never a Christian; but a social justice, radical revolutionary nonviolent
Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up and challenged the job security
of the Temple authorities by teaching the people they did NOT need to pay the
priests for ritual baths or sacrificing livestock to be OK with God; for God
already LOVED them just as they were: poor, diseased, outcasts, widows,
orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under Roman Military Occupation.

What got The Prince of Peace crucified was disturbing the status quo of the
Roman Occupying Forces by teaching the subversive concept that God/Pure Being preferred
the humble, the poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and
prisoners all living under a brutal Roman Occupation above the powerful, elite
and arrogant.

Spong wrote: "There is
no hope for the revival of worship as long as an idol lives undisturbed in the
place preserved for a living God."

No religion owns Pure Being
and no church owns The Prince of Peace. Any god, church or religion that is
threatened by new truth is already dead, so on with Evolution!

The Prince of Peace spoke
about "being born again" and he never meant that to be a solitary
experience, but a lifetime endeavor of waking up and seeing Pure Being within
oneself, all others and in every situation.

Living in the past has got no
soul and the future of Christianity will not be found in antiquity, but in our
ability to re-IMAGINE those ancient stories, symbols and concepts with modern
eyes.

Christianity came into
existence in a world radically different than ours. The ancients believed the
Universe consisted of three tiers; the earth at the center was flat, and the
judging, all knowing deity was up in the sky and hell was the place below.

The ancients ascribed to a
tribal, male supernatural being who validated warfare as a noble and divine
enterprise and his foreign policy was pro-Jewish.

The Christian god
"evolved' from tribal roots and the power of the Church to control
knowledge and public opinion in an invasive deity dominated civilization for
1,600 years until a new concept dawned.

Copernicus and his disciple
Galileo concluded that the sun did not rotate around the earth but that the
earth rotated around the sun. This revolutionary evolution in consciousness
began the shift from a god who was not so involved in the daily affairs of
humans.

Galileo was condemned a
heretic and not until December 28, 1991, did the Vatican officially admit he
was right and the Church and Bible had been wrong about the universe and
humankind's place in it.

The god on his throne out
there had died.

When Freud exposed the
childish neurotic elements in religion he was vilified and demonized by
Christian leaders.

Carl Jung offered a bridge of
reconciliation when he recognized the historic process necessary in the
development of Consciousness; which is the quality or state of being aware of
something within oneself.

Albert Einstein introduced
relativity as present in all things including "eternal and unchanging
truth."

Astrophysicists raised
awareness of the emptiness in the heavens above and that hit at the heart of
human loneliness.

"In the West there is
loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways it is worse than
our poor in Calcutta."-Mother Teresa, Commonweal, Dec 19, 1997.

The theistic concepts of a
supernatural big daddy in the sky, an errand boy just waiting to fill our
desires, and a deity that will punish us and thus motivates behavior is a god
that must at least be fired, if not killed.

Among the forward thinking
founding father's of America was Thomas Jefferson, who weeded out the miracle
stories from the gospels and clarified the teachings and ethics of Christ in:

THE LIFE AND MORALS of JESUS
of NAZARETH

1. Be just: justice comes from virtue, which comes from the heart.
2. Treat people the way we want to be treated.
3. Always work for PEACEFUL resolutions, even to the point of returning
violence with COMPASSION.
4. Consider valuable the things that have no material value.
5. Do not judge others.
6. Do not bear grudges.
7. Be modest and unpretentious.
8. Give out of true generosity, not because we expect to be repaid.
9. Being true to one's self in more important than being loyal to one's
family...those who think they know the most are the most ignorant...

The most ignored of our
founding fathers was Thomas Paine, who wrote:

A
long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of
being right.

It
is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible
describes.

Any
system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child,
cannot be true.

Belief
in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

Every
religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs
him to be bad.

Is
it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when
we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.

Reason
obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

Soon
after I had published the pamphlet "Common Sense" [on Feb. 14, 1776]
in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of
government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion... The
world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my
religion.

Reputation
is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.

Mother Teresa said she was
just "a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who was sending a love
letter to the world."

In this ongoing series I hope
to be a little pencil too, for "HOPE has two children. The first is ANGER
at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about
it."-St. Augustine

Mother Teresa also knew that,
"In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between
you and them anyway."

But, "Christ, you know
it ain't easy. You know how hard it can be. The way things are going. They're
gonna crucify me."-John Lennon

Amen and amen means so be it!

Visitors since 07.22.05

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"HOPE has two children.The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine

"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." - Aquinas

Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions
without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

" In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."-Mother Teresa

“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life.”- Lewis Mumford, 1946

The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership....a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures." - William Fulbright

“Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death.” - Rev. MLK

Establishment of Israel

"On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations." - May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the Establishment of Israel